Spent Casings
by Cherry
Summary: Bobby finds out what's been going on with Emma and Scott. [Emma/Bobby, Emma/Scott, 14A for language]


  
  
Once upon a time, I threw my LJ open to requests. This is one of the ones I have finished so far, and it's for Nepthys. Archival permission, should anyone happen to want it, is my site, anyone who has prior permission, and anyone who asks.  
  
Emma/Bobby, Emma/Scott, hard 14A for language.  
  
  


*  
Spent Casings  
1/1  
*  


  
  
His steps are heavy and loud. Back and forth, back and forth. There was a time she would have snapped at him to sit down, but she just examines her thigh-high boots (hooker boots if he ever saw them) with eyes he cannot read. She has a broken nail that she looks at disinterestedly, and the only reason her clothes are not torn is that there is not enough of them to do any damage to.   
  
There is a single drop of blood at the corner of her absently curled lips, and it is with anger that he realizes that he still wants to lean in and wipe the single red spot off. Return her to her pristine white, because against the colour she is paler than alabaster perfection. She is something that haunts hallowed ground in the night.  
  
"What the hell was that?" he finally snaps, because he can't take it any longer. He used to be able to read *something* in her eyes, he remembers.  
  
"On my part? Mostly kick boxing." She finishes her inspection of her boots and raises her eyes to him. "On Jean's, mostly -- well, I'm not really sure *what* she was doing, but it didn't seems to serve her particularly well, now did it?"  
  
"Emma!"  
  
She slides off her bed and over to her mirror. Wipes away the blood. It stands out brightly against her white gloves. "Now, Bobby, I know you know what that was. You've trained in most of those same techniques."  
  
"And you know what I meant."  
  
"If there was anything you didn't recognize, it's because you chose to disappear for a year." She brushes her hair. She doesn't wince, though Bobby knows Jean got a good yank in.  
  
"Scott. You're really --"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Scott-fucking-Summers."  
  
She flips the mass of hair over her other shoulder and pulls the brush through that side. "Can't pull the wool over your eyes, now can I?"  
  
"Why?" he spits.  
  
Her face in the mirror is blank, and she seems to regard it without surprise. "Because I can," she says finally, thoughtfully.   
  
Bobby fights the impulse to drive a fist through something. There's no real reason Scott's face should be at the top of the list, but it's right up there. He's punched enough walls to know who inevitably looses, so he settles for swearing forcefully. Emma ties her hair neatly back.  
  
He sits down on the foot of her bed, rests his weight back on his elbows and watches her. There is none of the hyperawareness that he is on her *bed* that there has always been before. "Because you can," he repeats. "You're fucking Scott Summers because you can."  
  
She attaches diamond earrings to her lobes. It's a good thing she wasn't wearing them before, he thinks, because they might not be there any longer. "Yes," is all she says. She seems paler than they are, somehow.  
  
"You seduced him because you could."  
  
"Now, Bobby, what makes you think I was doing the seducing?"  
  
"Personal experience," he says pointedly. It is at this time that one year ago she would have laughed, and he finds the silence in that space chilling.  
  
"Maybe I did, but he was willing," is her only reply.   
  
"And you don't feel anything?" Bobby asks. The silence is as hollow as the space where her laugh is missing. He thinks he's missed a lot while he was gone.  
  
"Whatever," he says.   
  
She turns to look at him, and he realizes why he is no longer able to read her eyes. There is nothing in them. Absolutely nothing.   
  
"You won. You seduced him or he let you, but you won. Why piss off Jean until she jumped on you? Why whisper those little dirty secrets into her mind until she lost it?"  
  
Emma unwinds her hair and starts to brush it again. She has eyes only for the mirror. "Why not?" she asks.  
  
"Because you'd all ready won."  
  
"Are you jealous, Bobby?"  
  
He suddenly becomes aware again – not that it is her *bed* that he sprawls across, but that he sprawls. Straight-backed, he watches her gaze right through her reflection. "You probably know the answer to that better than I do. You're probably deeper in my head right now than I am, so why don't you tell me?"  
  
She turns, hair shadowing half her face, and smiles an empty smile. "You'd take me right now, if I'd let you. Up against the wall, so you could prove to something to someone. You want to sit across the supper table from him and know that you had me screaming."  
  
He swallows dryly. "You never told me why."  
  
She does laugh at this, a sound not unlike glass breaking. "Why? Because I can."  
  
"You'd won. You'd beaten her. Now she's coming out on top."  
  
Emma laughs again, the sound skittering along every nerve in his body, and Bobby feels himself shiver.  
  
"You really don't get it, do you?" she asks. All he can do is shake his head. "I only win if she hurts me. If she lands a blow that I can feel."  
  
"What do you --"  
  
"You think I've won? I win – I only win if she hurts me. Don't you get it, Bobby? She can't hurt me." Emma shakes her head. Laughs that icy laugh with her empty eyes. "It's too late for that. I don't know if anything can hurt me any more."  
  
Hollow silence as he tries to think of something to say. Sitting with his hands on his knees on the foot of Emma Frost's bed, watching the nothingness where she used to be, the hush says more than he ever could.  
  
She laughs, and the retort cuts almost deep enough to draw blood. "I lose, Bobby. I always lose."  



End file.
